32-Year Winter Storm Archive

[The 4 Seasons]

1 hour ago, vortex95 said:

There were significant issues at many climate sites when ASOS was installed in the mid 90s concerning snowfall.  Some sites like ORH have big gaps in the record b/c of this.  So I would avoid F6 data when it is obvious it does not jibe w/ surrounding reports.  And even when snow observations were set at climate sites were set post-ASOS, we know just from BOS the issues were still rife.  And how about DCA official snowfall for the Bliz of '16?, what a joke when you look at other reports in the metro area.

Well thats whats in the official, set in stone records so i have to use it if im going to highlight the airports on the map. A lot of them are wonky, not just BDL, and not just for the late 90s or 00s. People claim a lot of the NYC data is low, as recent as the blizzard of 2026, but it kinda is what it is. And BDR is notoriously low. 

yea i remember the blizz of 16 was very low for DCA. 

[UnitedWx]

On 3/12/2026 at 6:25 AM, The 4 Seasons said:

That was my suspicion as well, though it is never noted on any of the PNS from BOX during that time and the data is missing in the now data F6.

Do you think it would be fair just to label those as BDL on the maps im doing for that time?

Ill wait to see what @H2Otown_WX says

No, I believe East Granby is different from the airport. I remember this coming up a long time ago. I don't exactly remember where, but believe it was near one of the schools. It's also kind of unfortunate that BDL is used for official measurements as it is regularly/generally the lowest accumulation for the area in any given average winter system... many times by many inches

[dendrite]

59 minutes ago, UnitedWx said:

No, I believe East Granby is different from the airport. I remember this coming up a long time ago. I don't exactly remember where, but believe it was near one of the schools. It's also kind of unfortunate that BDL is used for official measurements as it is regularly/generally the lowest accumulation for the area in any given average winter system... many times by many inches

It’s possible they had an observer doing measurements outside of the airport to represent BDL…just like how CON and PWM aren’t actually at the airports anymore. 

[The 4 Seasons]

1 hour ago, dendrite said:

It’s possible they had an observer doing measurements outside of the airport to represent BDL…just like how CON and PWM aren’t actually at the airports anymore. 

i dunno Will seems to think that they are definitely for BDL, at least most of them he said.

When i was reading old PNS they would sometimes state "within 2mi of major airports". So i guess the observers had to be within 2 miles of the airport itself as a requirement. 

[dendrite]

7 minutes ago, The 4 Seasons said:

i dunno Will seems to think that they are definitely for BDL, at least most of them he said.

When i was reading old PNS they would sometimes state "within 2mi of major airports". So i guess the observers had to be within 2 miles of the airport itself as a requirement. 

I agree…probably for BDL. But they were canning human observers as ASOS took over so they may not have had anyone directly at the airport to do the obs. So they may have found a contract or volunteer observer close by. Not sure…just guessing.

[The 4 Seasons]

A little late past the anniversary but i updated the pi-day blizzard as well as Dec 2009 and Jan 21-22 2014 with new snowfall maps